High blood pressure can be caused by lots of different things — heart disease, kidney disease, and adrenal gland problems, for example. There is also primary hypertension, in which there is no underlying cause of high blood pressure.
I had just been to our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Tanya Donovan, with Bentley before heading over to see Sarah, so I called Tanya to see if she had time to look at Wilbur.
Tanya said she could definitely do a work-up on Wilbur, so I drove back over to her clinic at Burlington Emergency and Veterinary Specialists. Tanya and her team went to work on Wilbur. In the photo above, vet techs Brenna (left) and Katie (right) hold Wilbur for a blood draw. They also retested his blood pressure, getting the same high readings that Sarah had.
In this next photo, Tanya is doing an ultrasound while Katie holds Wilbur:
So the working assumption at this point is that he has primary hypertension, and Tanya started him on a twice-daily medication to bring his blood pressure down. We are rechecking his blood pressure tomorrow, on Wednesday, to see how much the medication has helped in the meantime.
Except for the two blood spots in his retina, though, Sarah thought his eye looked good a year after the surgery. So if we can get the high blood pressure under control, he should still be good for another 10,000 miles.
Shelter Challenge Contest — Please Vote for the Farm!
The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 7 and ends on April 28. Grand prize in this round is $10,000, $3,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories … please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.
*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm. The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***
Please remember, you can vote every day … consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.
We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the current contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!
You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.
Thank you for your votes!
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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